Virtualization

Virtualization is the act of enabling a physical IT resource to perform in a manner that is different than its physical profile or functionality. Clearly, enabling one resource to perform multiple or alternate roles increases its utility and reduces the need for capital expenditures on additional resources. Solutions are now available for using virtualization to optimize the utilization rate and value of a broad range of IT infrastructure resources including:

• Server
• Storage
• Security
• Network

Most frequently, the term virtualization is used in reference to server or system virtualization. Server virtualization separates or combines physical machines into one or many virtual machines. A single physical server can behave as though it's many virtual machines, many servers can function as though they are one, or one server can work as though it's a machine with very different capabilities and characteristics.

Managed through a single interface, our virtualized servers sit within an automated hybrid platform that allows seamless integration of all IT elements including dedicated, virtualized and cloud servers.

Benefits of virtualization include:

• Hardware consolidation reduces capital expenditures and energy costs
• Standardization of operating systems reduces errors
• Rapid provisioning improves time-to-market
• Physical servers are made more interchangeable
• Portability improves availability, recovery, and flexibility

Key Advantages

• Automated delivery of IT infrastructure for the rapid scaling of solutions
• Best-practice OS builds and patching
• Private-network connectivity, ideal for hypervisor management
• Network storage based on iSCSI SAN and NAS for virtual machine storage to enable high-end virtualization features
• Virtual Enterprise Racks to allow integrated network performance

Enterprise Racks

Through our unique data center and network architecture, enterprises may practicably connect physically separated servers - even between our geographically diverse datacenters - into virtual racks for optimized performance and integrated performance and management.

• Virtual Private Racks - Every dedicated server can be configured as a Virtual Private Rack, allowing you to scale on demand without the cost of maintaining unused rack space, reconfiguring server IPs, or physically moving servers. Virtual Private Racks include public and private VLANs for secure connections and free cross connects.
• Virtual Dedicated Racks - Virtual Dedicated Racks allow for advanced graphing capabilities and bandwidth pooling.
• Virtual Data Center - Virtual Data Center solutions are available to create a total IT environment with a minimum of 22 servers and scalable to multiple physical racks

Citrix XenServer

American Frontier offers Citrix XenServer, a powerful, open, and easy-to-use server virtualization solution. XenServer is powered by the popular Xen hypervisor, which operates directly on top of a physical server's bare metal hardware to enable multiple virtual machines (VMs) to be created and operated on the single physical machine. XenServer also provides an industry-leading, easy-to-use management console that can provision and manage any number of physical and virtual machines across a distributed data center environment.

XenServer provides unique advantages and benefits, such as:

• Unique Management Architecture - eliminating single points of failure and providing detailed monitoring
• Industry-leading Low Overhead - offering near bare metal performance
• Plug and Play Storage Architecture - allowing control over advanced storage functions
• Dynamic Workload Management - workload streaming from the network to both physical servers and VMs
• High availability - allowing VMs on a failed host to automatically restart on another physical server
• XenMotion Live Migration - migrating VMs between physical servers with zero downtime

Microsoft Hyper-V

American Frontier provides Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, a next-generation virtualization hypervisor. Hyper-V operates directly on top of a physical server's bare metal hardware to enable multiple virtual machines (VMs) to be created and operated on the single physical machine. Each VM can run an independent operating system-Windows, Linux and others. Hyper-V also provides integrated management tools to manage both physical and virtual machine resources.

Hyper-V delivers a comprehensive feature set, including:

• Broad OS Support - simultaneously running diverse OSs (including 32-bit and 64-bit)
• Symmetric Multiprocessors (SMP) Support - emulating up to four processors per VM
• Live Virtual Machine Snapshot - improving overall backup and recovery
• Windows Clustering - integrating up to 16 VMs on the same physical system
• Quick Migration - migration of running VMs between physical systems with minimal downtime

Parallels Virtuozzo Containers

American Frontier offers Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, an industry-leading OS virtualization tool and a preferred solution for hosting services providers worldwide. Virtuozzo creates multiple, independent "containers" on a single physical server and OS instance. Each container holds an independent virtual environment (VE) complete with its own Linux operating system. Virtuozzo allows diverse and incompatible applications on a single physical machine, letting enterprises utilize hardware, software, and data center resources and manage workloads with maximum efficiency.

Virtuozzo's Innovative design provides advanced capabilities including:

• Intelligent Partitioning - dividing servers into hundreds of VEs, each with full server functionality
• Complete Isolation - providing each VE full functional, fault, and performance independence
• Dynamic Resource Allocation - near real-time balancing of key server resources
• Live Migration - ensuring data availability even while migrating VEs between physical servers
• Mass Management - tools and templates for automated, multi-VE, and multi-server administration

VMWare ESX

American Frontier provides VMWare ESX for enterprise caliber server virtualization. Virtualize even the most resource-intensive applications with the hypervisor architectures that set the industry standard for reliability, performance and cross-platform support.

VMware ESX is a "bare-metal" hypervisor architecture, meaning it installs directly on top of the physical server and partition it into multiple virtual machines that can run simultaneously, sharing the physical resources of the underlying server. Each virtual machine represents a complete system, with processors, memory, networking, storage and BIOS, and can run an unmodified operating system and applications.

VMware delivers on core business virtualization requirements, including:

• Complete Virtual Platform - delivers live migration, aggregation, allocation, power management, and high availability
• Reliable Foundation - provides a robust and production-proven hypervisor
• Comprehensive Virtualization Management - allows centralized management of virtual machines
• Integrate with Your Infrastructure - creates a strong support ecosystem that integrates with existing solutions
• Low Total Cost of Ownership - maximizes virtual machine density per physical machine